


Remembrance

by fishscalesky



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: :(, Angst, Longing, M/M, Remus isn’t the poster child for getting over a breakup, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love, it’s just sad okay it’s just Sad, probably a downer if I’m being honest, well it was requited but not anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:42:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishscalesky/pseuds/fishscalesky
Summary: He was tissue paper, thin and liable to tear at the slightest touch. Used and thrown away, to wrap something beautiful, and then forgotten, abandoned, discarded.& we KEEP this tone for 1k words of Sad
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> onward!!

Remus Lupin, wanted and forgotten, had and discarded, loved and lost. Kissed and abandoned. 

A lot of words were used to describe him, and they  _ all _ hurt because his skin was paper thin, but the one sentence that punctured holes in his parchment heart was one he heard again. 

And again. 

And again. 

(It was on loop, played repeatedly, until he lived and breathed the reminder.)

_ I,  _ and here he had sighed, as if being made  _ (made,  _ tears in his eyes, his throat, his lips when Remus could no longer ignore the love that had been stolen from him) to tell Remus even this was an inconvenience beyond comprehension,  _ don’t love you anymore.  _

And that? That was it. The end of it. The end of it all, actually. 

_ He left.  _

He left, again and again, over and over, this time was just final. Permanent. A long time coming, but he ignored every sign and now he was paying for it, paying dearly. 

_ Fight for him.  _ The thought had crossed Remus’s mind, however fleetingly, before he snuffed it out. Why would he fight for someone who didn’t want him? Why would he take the knife between his shoulder blades and twist it, by his own hand? Better to try his luck in forgetting. 

It didn’t work. It still hurt, days, later, weeks, years, a millennia of time passing like molasses, slow as treacle, syrupy time, thick and neglected. 

It hurt. Far too much. Far too painfully, heart-shatteringly, stealing Remus’s breath with the intensity of how much he missed him. He  _ shouldn’t  _ feel like this, like the ground had been swiftly pulled from beneath his feet and he’d been kissed once, bruisingly, before being told to  _ keep walking.  _

There was nothing to walk on, every time he tried to step. Eventually he realized he was falling. 

Logically?

Remus was better off. He wasn’t being toyed with, he was no longer at his beck and call. His emotions were free from their puppeteer strings. 

He was empty, he was alone. 

_ I don’t love you anymore.  _

He hadn’t even apologized. 

Just those five words, an explanation, an apology, a shrug and a smile as if nothing was wrong, as if Remus’s heart wasn’t aflame in his chest, as if Remus’s breath didn’t shatter out of his lungs like broken glass, leaving burning trails with each too-quick exhale. 

_ There’s someone else? _

_ There is.  _

So  _ easily  _ he said it, so  _ easily  _ he dropped Remus like hot coals. Someone else, someone new.

Someone to replace him, someone better, someone more, someone he could love and could love for maybe forever, certainly longer than he loved Remus, if he even had. Had he?

He said he had. 

Remus would learn to move on. He’d learn to stop dwelling on what couldn’t be, he’d learn to stop snapping awake at night to hug himself as if he wasn’t alone, to miss the touches, the kisses, the quicksilver smiles and starlit eyes. The love, so painful and bright between them, a web of fiery golden threads from every bit of Remus to every bit of him. 

Vanished. Extinguished with a puff of smoke. 

He wondered what the countless threads of their love looked like aflame. Burning orange, red, glowing embers in the thick darkness, as thick as the tears at the back of Remus’s throat. 

Fragile and thin and gone. Not even a curl of smoke as a remembrance. 

_ How easy was it? _

_ How easy was it to forget me? _

He cried until he couldn’t cry, and then the anger came. Remus was glad for it, for the ache it shoved away and hatred it set down in place. He’d rather feel anything but the emptiness. 

And that was good, it felt good. Sometimes at night he curled up and let himself gasp dry sobs, when the day of  _ I’m better off  _ was over and loneliness could creep in. 

But oh, the anger. 

The anger was brilliant, fresh and new and  _ hot.  _ It seared and stung. 

_ How could you do this to me? How dare you do this to someone you loved, I thought you loved, you said you loved— _

He wanted to shout and scream and rage and maybe throw things, maybe hurt things, but he couldn’t let himself feel the depth of his emotions. He was afraid of what he had the capacity to feel. 

So Remus took his anger and his love and his grief and he bottled it up, screwed the cap on tight and threw it away, as far as he could while curved around the bleeding center of his fractured self. 

_ How easy was it, to drop me, to stop loving me? _

_ Tell me please, I need to stop loving you. Tell me how.  _

Remus needed him even now, he needed him so much it was a jagged, thorny pain, digging with hooked barbs into his side with every crackling breath. 

He was tissue paper, thin and liable to tear at the slightest touch. Used and thrown away, to wrap something beautiful, and then forgotten, abandoned, discarded. 

As Remus dashed tears from his cheeks, staring at the cracked screen of his phone, waiting for a call that wouldn’t come, a text he would never read. He thought every breath might shred the last dregs of him. He was tea leaves, too heavy, too bitter to drink, left at the bottom of a teacup. 

The hairline fracture in the glass of his phone screen looked like lightning, arcing down to strike just where his fingerprint was imprinted on the surface. 

_ I won’t be on your leash,  _ Remus vowed.  _ I won’t be your lie, I won’t be there.  _ He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he refused, he knew he would. 

Remus cursed himself, viciously, every thought a viscous entrapment meant to take him down, self-sabotage at its finest. 

He was textbook. 

His phone stared. 

_ Call.  _

_ No.  _

Remus missed him. He missed him too much, he missed him and he missed _everything_ he’d hardly paid attention to. He missed the happiness he’d so briefly gotten, he missed him the way he missed smiling, wanting to smile, he desperately missed that silvery grey color around the dilation of pupils, a raven’s fall of dark hair, alabaster skin and cutting-edge smirks. 

Remus loved him. 

He loved him, too much, so much, even when he knew he shouldn’t. He knew it wasn’t okay, he knew he was twisting the knife with every second the memories he let into his head stole his breath. 

Smile. Eyes. Soft laughter,  _ I love yous  _ that were lies. Relics from another, glowing, golden, beautiful time. Ancient, even. Long gone, long lost, long remembered.

He remembered, and sometimes he wondered if that was a curse he would do anything to lift. 

But he couldn’t lose these past moments, the snippets he clung to so tightly. 

Remus would take it. He would take the limit, he would take the bare minimum, he would take a wisp of a voice, a ghost of a touch. He would take anything. 

He would take even a sliver of a smile if it meant he got to see those mercury eyes. He would take a single wink if it meant he got to press the pads of his fingers to those sharp cheekbones even just for a fleeting touch. 

His skin craved it. 

He would take anything. 

_ Please. Please.  _

He strove, desperately, to conform to how he should feel, but his heart was a dissenter and Sirius was leading him farther and farther away from peace. 

_ Sirius.  _

Remus clicked call, words hovering on his tongue. Sirius would say yes, if he asked  _ just when… only if… not always…  _

No strings. 

How could he not? He may not love Remus, but he wouldn’t turn him down if he pleaded. 

“Sirius...”

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey inspired by listening to the cut that always bleeds by conan gray one too many times and wallowing so here y’are


End file.
